Good morning, I’m Dan Gartland. I was looking forward all day to the Tennessee–Florida game. So much for that.
In today’s SI:AM:
🐊 No. 1 goes down
☘️ New-look Notre Dame
⛳ Inside TGL’s opening night
And then there were none
Just a week into the new year, there are no undefeated teams left in men’s college basketball.
The Tennessee Volunteers were the last unbeaten team in the nation entering Tuesday night but saw their run come to a screeching halt in a blowout loss to the Florida Gators in Gainesville.
The SEC showdown between the No. 1 Vols and No. 8 Gators looked like the most compelling matchup on a loaded night of men’s hoops, but Tennessee was utterly hapless on offense in a 73–43 shellacking. The Vols were a brutal 12-for-56 (21.4%) from the field, including a woeful 4-for-29 (13.8%) from three. Tennessee has never had a lower shooting percentage in any game in the school’s history, and its 43 points were its fewest in a game in 10 years.
The game was essentially over by halftime, after Tennessee made just four of 29 shot attempts (13.8%) and fell behind 34–15 at the break. Star senior Chaz Lanier, who had averaged 20.3 points in the team’s first 14 games and shot a blistering 46.7% from three, was held to just 10 points on 3-of-16 shooting (1-of-9 from three). Lanier did tie his season high with seven rebounds, but Tennessee lost the battle on the boards by a wide margin, 55–38.
“You get beat that badly on the boards, it’s tough to win,” Vols coach Rick Barnes said.
Barnes pointed to the play on the interior as the biggest reason his team lost.
“We have to get better play out of our frontline,” Barnes said. “I thought they had their way in there on the frontline, which I really thought was the difference in the game.”
The win was just Florida’s third over a No. 1-ranked team in school history and the Gators’ first since they beat Ohio State in the 2007 national championship game. It’s stunning to see the top team in the country get stomped by 30 points, but the game highlighted Tennessee’s weaknesses in addition to establishing Florida as a serious contender in the SEC.
The Vols are a defense-first team, having ranked 13th in defensive efficiency last season and second this season. Their defense wasn’t bad on Tuesday, holding Florida under its season average of 87.3 points per game and limiting the Gators to a 39.7 shooting percentage. The problem for Tennessee was, clearly, the offense. Lanier and senior point guard Zakai Zeigler are the foundation of the Vols’ offense, and both struggled against the Gators. Lanier leads the SEC in scoring, and Zeigler leads the conference in assists per game. Senior Jordan Gainey is also a key cog offensively for the Vols—a bench player capable of scoring in bunches—but he managed just seven points on 1-of-11 shooting against Florida. Tennessee’s offense is generally solid (ranking 50th nationally in points per 100 possessions) but there’s no way it could have weathered off nights from all three of those players.
Those struggles speak to Florida’s marked improvement on defense. Last season the Gators were among the worst defensive teams in the nation, ranking 337th in points allowed per game and 258th in defensive efficiency. (It should come as no surprise, then, that their season came to an end in a 102–100 loss to the Colorado Buffaloes in the first round of the NCAA tournament.) This year, though, Florida has one of the best defenses in all of college basketball. The Gators are allowing 64.9 points per game, good for 42nd in the nation, and rank ninth nationally in defensive efficiency. They’re the only team in the country that ranks in the top 10 in both offensive and defensive efficiency.
Elsewhere in the SEC on Tuesday, the No. 2 Auburn Tigers held on for an 87–82 win against the Texas Longhorns on the road and should be the No. 1 team in the AP poll next week if they can avoid an upset on Saturday against the South Carolina Gamecocks. The No. 6 Kentucky Wildcats lost to the Georgia Bulldogs in Athens in another example of how deep the conference is. Four of Kentucky’s next five games are against SEC foes currently ranked in the top 15. The most interesting thing to watch over the next two months of college basketball will be who wins this loaded conference.
The best of Sports Illustrated
- Conor Orr explains why the Raiders’ coaching hire will show a lot about how involved minority owner Tom Brady will be in the team’s operations.
- Gilberto Manzano and Matt Verderame named their first- and second-team NFL All Pro selections.
- The rest of the MMQB staff also handed out their picks for all the major NFL season awards.
- Notre Dame finally has the athleticism and big-play potential to hang with the best in college football, Pat Forde writes.
- Zach Koons listed the 15 most impactful players who will be in this week’s CFP semifinals.
- Bob Harig was at the inaugural night of the new TGL golf competition, which had plenty of ups and downs.
- The Cotton Bowl will go ahead as planned despite a forecasted snowstorm in the Dallas area.
- Justin Verlander has signed a one-year deal with the Giants for his 20th MLB season.
- Former Orioles pitcher Brian Matusz has died. He was 37.
The top five…
… things I saw last night:
5. Stephen Curry’s crossover that left Nikola Jovic in the dust. (It was a rough night for the Warriors, though, who fell to the Heat, 114–98, leading to an agitated postgame press conference from Curry.)
4. Zion Williamson’s 360 dunk in his return from a 27-game absence.
3. Cooper Flagg’s thunderous dunk right on top of a Pitt defender.
2. LeBron James’s mid-air hand switch for a jaw-dropping dunk.
1. Trae Young’s game-winner at the buzzer from beyond halfcourt.
This article was originally published on www.si.com as SI:AM | Men’s Basketball’s Last Undefeated Goes Down.